Ioana Macrea-Toma’s article in the Journal of Cold War Studies

Our colleague Ioana Macrea-Toma’s article, More than ‘Soul Catchers’: Understanding Eastern Europe through Audience and Opinion Surveys at Radio Free Europe during the Cold War, offers a deep dive into Radio Free Europe’s (RFE) audience research and its broader implications.

Published in the Journal of Cold War Studies (Vol. 26, No. 3, 2024), the study examines how RFE, an anti-communist broadcaster funded by the U.S. government, sought to understand and influence Eastern European societies from the 1950s to 1989. While RFE surveys revealed striking statistics—such as 53% of adults in Eastern Europe reportedly listening to its programs by 1989—Macrea-Toma argues that these findings reflected not just audience behavior but also the methodological and conceptual challenges of Cold War data collection.

The study aims to propose a middle ground in evaluating Western Cold War projects in Eastern Europe, moving beyond dismissing them as mere “counter-propaganda” or treating them as purely objective data. Both extremes have obstructed critical analysis by ignoring their political agendas and biases while overlooking valuable insights.

Despite recognizing the limitations of their methods, analysts amassed a substantial body of survey and analytical data, now housed at the Blinken OSA Archivum. Macrea-Toma uses this material to evaluate RFE survey findings, comparing them with records from the Hoover Institution Archives and declassified Communist state archives.

Her analysis guides researchers in extracting reliable insights about Cold War events from problematic sources. It also offers tips for working with OSA materials, like RFE Public Affairs Photos, and their concept of “objectivity.” Finally, it situates this sociological output within the broader RFE archives and suggests new approaches to evaluating its relevance.

Faced with the closed and repressive nature of communist regimes, RFE analysts relied on unconventional methods like interviewing refugees and travelers in informal and often precarious settings. These limitations, coupled with broadcast jamming and restricted access to radio sets, forced analysts to aggregate fragmented data, producing results that were frequently inconsistent with local realities. Despite their efforts, RFE’s work often reflected Western biases, struggling to reconcile concepts like civil liberties with the socio-economic equality favored by Eastern European audiences.

Macrea-Toma situates these surveys within the broader context of the Cold War as a clash of communication cultures, contrasting RFE’s truth-seeking efforts with the propagandistic accusations of espionage leveled by communist secret police. RFE’s surveys occupied a unique middle ground between data collection and intelligence gathering, creating a “truth regime” that navigated the competing demands of political propaganda, audience needs, and scientific rigor.

By exploring RFE’s work through the lens of the emerging history of knowledge field, Macrea-Toma critiques traditional interpretations of Cold War data as either neutral or purely politicized. Her analysis underscores the complexities of truth-seeking during this era, offering a nuanced perspective on how institutions like RFE shaped not just perceptions but political outcomes in Eastern Europe. This study invites a reconsideration of Cold War historiography, urging scholars to reflect on the production and interpretation of knowledge in the context of ideological conflict.